“The
passengers were ordered to get off the busses and enter
the Border Patrol offices, where they refused to provide
the documentation officials were demanding.

“`They were asked for their identification but the
passengers felt it was racial profiling and exercised
their right to remain silent,” [Freedom Ride leader
Leone] Bicchieri said. “Almost everyone on both
busses are people of color.` ”

How about “almost everyone on
both busses” were illegal immigrants riding a bus
with a sign on each side saying “Illegal Immigrants
Here.”?

“The
Border Patrol said it didn`t know if any passengers were
detained. Bicchieri said he `didn`t know` if any of the
passengers are illegal aliens” [Immigrant
Activists Stopped by Border Patrol, September 26,
2003, by Jim Forsyth, WOAI.com]

It`s a good thing Bicchieri
“doesn`t know.” If he did, he would be admitting to
smuggling illegals.

But how could he not know? All the
news stories about interviews with the “freedom
riders” have human interest
sob stories about specific illegals.

Four names plucked at random from
the fawning press coverage. If the press can find all
these illegals among the Freedom Riders just by asking,
then you`d think Leone Bicchieri, after a week actually
on the bus with them, would be able to figure it out.

And did the Border Patrol manage to
detain any of these people? No, according to WOAI, the

“…busses were released following the intervention of El
Paso
Bishop Armando X. Ochoa and two [unnamed]
members of Congress, who called on the Border Patrol,
which is now a part of the Department of Homeland
Security, to allow the passengers to proceed.”

I`d like to know who those
congressmen were, and what their excuse was.

It doesn`t seem proper for them to
let people they strongly suspect of being illegal go
because they have a Democratic Congressman in their
corner. And as for the
Bishop`s intervention, it would inspire screams from liberals if he`d succeeded in intervening on behalf
of anti-abortion protesters.

Why does the Catholic Church`s
hierarchy insist on helping illegals continue to
invade the US?

We`ve covered the question of
Indian, Israeli, and Mexican offering their nationals
dual citizenship with the U.S. Now the
Republic of the Philippines is getting into the act.

The San Francisco Chronicle
reports that the Philippine government has passed a law
allowing overseas Filipinos to reclaim their
citizenship, without, apparently, damaging their claim
to US citizenship.

Both the INS (whatever they`re
calling it this week) and the reporter who covered this
story seem happy about his.

“Naturalized U.S. citizens do not lose their U.S.
citizenship unless they formally renounce it, or unless
they serve in the military of a foreign state at war
with the United States, according to a spokeswoman for
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, formerly the
Immigration and Naturalization Service.

And
the oath that the Philippine consul general administered
was carefully worded to avoid any renunciation.

“`I
will support and defend the constitution of the
Philippines,` the oath said. `I recognize the supreme
authority of the Philippines.`

No he can`t. Supreme means supreme.
That`s why the
current US
citizenship oath which all these loyal Americans
took, before they took this new one to the Philippines,
says

“I
absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all
allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince,
potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I
have heretofore been a subject or citizen.”

The Philippines until recently
banned dual citizenship, saying that if someone
became an American, he or she would now be treated as a
foreigner, who couldn`t “own land, hold investments
and vote in next year`s presidential election in their
former homeland.”

That strikes me as a reasonable
attitude. And it might be a better one for the US
government.

For those who`ve suggested that the
old “princes and potentates” language is irrelevant to
the modern world here is a short simple example: